Staying With the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene

Donna Haraway

51 pages 1-hour read

Donna Haraway

Staying With the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2016

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Essay Topics

1.

How does Haraway’s account of Mixotricha paradoxa in Chapter 3 work as evidence for the broader claim that nothing makes itself alone?

2.

Haraway names four art-science worldings in Chapter 3. How do the Crochet Coral Reef and Navajo-Churro sheep restoration differ in what they ask of human participants, and what might the potential effects of this be, particularly in the context of rendering each other “capable” as Haraway describes?

3.

What does the figure of the “holobiont” let Haraway argue that the figure of the cyborg from her famous earlier work, “A Cyborg Manifesto” (1985), cannot?

4.

How does the structure of the Camille stories, which move through five generations rather than centering on one, shape what the fabulation can claim about “kin-making”?

5.

Why does Haraway prefer “Capitalocene” to “Anthropocene” as a name for the present rupture, and what does the choice of name commit her to? Keep in mind her assertion that the thoughts or stories people tell shape further thoughts and actions.

6.

What role does shame play in the DES and Premarin chapter, and how does Haraway distinguish it from guilt or moral responsibility?

7.

How does Haraway’s reading of the acacia-ant mutualism revise the conclusion that Le Guin’s fictional therolinguists reach about plants making “art”? What does this contribute to her broader argument?

8.

In what sense is Vinciane Despret’s “virtue of politeness” a methodology rather than an ethical disposition (127), and how does Haraway use it?

9.

What does Haraway gain, and what does she risk, in conveying her points by closing the book inside the Camille fabulation rather than returning to first-person argument?

10.

How does the SF acronym function differently across individual chapters, and what purpose does this serve to the broader themes?

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